


wayward apples

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e21 Ragtag, Established Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 01:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7019545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of the Uprising, there’s a bone-deep need in her to know what’s become of all her loved ones (and former loved ones).</p>
            </blockquote>





	wayward apples

**Author's Note:**

> Over on tumblr laurelancing prompted "I'm so sorry. I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

“There’s no Bus,” Jemma says sadly. They have a full view of the airfield from this shack and there’s no sign of it. “But plenty of activity.”

“How many agents, d’you figure died so they could steal those?” Fitz asks as he pulls out his burner cell to call in their findings to Coulson.

She scans the distant figures loading supplies onto a collection of four quinjets and two jump jets. “Perhaps none at all,” she muses, “perhaps they had these in their care long before they were exposed.” It’s a depressing thought, almost as much as what’s missing from this picture.

“I don’t see him.” Fitz has the phone to his ear and is looking at her intently. “I don’t think he’s here.”

She means to nod, to accept what she’s sure he means as reassurance, but his call is answered and he turns away. The truth is, she won’t be settled until she knows where Grant is, until she’s certain he’s not hurting any more innocents.

Of course she won’t be settled even then, either. There’s a bone-deep need in her to know what’s become of all her loved ones (and former loved ones). The team is all accounted for, of course, and they’re working to deal with Grant, but her parents are nothing but a question mark.

Communications being what they were in the immediate wake of the Uprising, she did the prudent thing by sending her parents a quick text - _Alive. Safe. Make contact when able._ \- before relinquishing her phone along with her badge when Skye made her rounds. They have a set plan for making contact in case of emergency like this, when typical avenues of communication are cut off, but that will take some time and she can only hope goings-on at the satellite office they operate out of were less dramatic than those at the Hub.

Her parents, she reminds herself as Fitz ends his call, are seasoned agents and more than capable of taking care of themselves. Even her father, who’s spent his whole life in a lab, is far better prepared for this sort of mess than she is. They’ll be _fine_ , as everyone on the team has told her multiple times. And perhaps that’s the heart of the problem right there: the one voice she trusts to reassure her is no longer present or even qualified to do so.

She looks longingly out to the jets again as Fitz finishes his report on Coulson’s instructions to leave, hide, more of the same. It would sink her spirits if it were at all possible for them to fall any further.

“We’ve got the DWARFs,” Fitz says suddenly. “We could send one or two into the jets, figure out what Garrett’s up to.”

And, Jemma’s sure, figure out who’s on board and who isn’t. “That sounds like a spectacular idea,” she says, giving him the nearest thing to a real smile she’s been able to muster since Providence.

He returns it and heads for the door to gather the DWARFs from the car, only his footsteps stop too soon. Jemma’s prevented from turning to see what’s wrong by the rather disheartening sight of an agent holding an ICER on her just outside the window. (He was a _SHIELD_ agent only a few days ago; she didn’t know him then, but she knows he was and she can’t seem to stop thinking of that fact.)

“Jem?” The familiar endearment snaps her attention right around to the door.

Grant holds out his hand, inviting her to join him and smiling encouragingly the same way he did the first time he took her to the shooting range. His face is bruised, dried blood detracting from his perfect features. The hand is similarly marred, knuckles bloodied from the sieges of both the Hub and the Fridge. From _killing Koenig_ , she thinks and her lip quivers.

Fitz steps between them. “Don’t you touch her,” he growls. It’s so unlike him that for a moment she’s more frightened of him than of Grant - but only a moment.

“She’s my fiancée, _Leo_ , I’m allowed to want to hold my fiancée’s hand, aren’t I?” He directs the question over Fitz’s shoulder at her and Jemma can only stumble back. Grant’s hopeful expression falls into disappointment and he tips his head, throwing his words at the agents who have appeared behind him. “Keep Fitz from making any trouble. I’ll handle her myself.”

There’s a scuffle, though not much of one. Fitz is determined to defend her but as neither Grant nor Jemma move until he’s been dragged out the door, there’s no one for him to defend her _from_.

The sounds of his yelling and struggling fade away, leaving Jemma with a twisted stomach and a psychotic former fiancé. She wishes, for the first time since she was a teenager, that she could have someone else’s life, _anyone_ else’s life, if only she didn’t have to be living hers at this exact moment.

“ _Jem_ ,” Grant says again, stepping forward.

The wall is directly behind her and she refuses to be backed into it. She holds her ground and tips her chin back proudly.

“I’m not going to hurt you. You know that.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” she says, fixing her gaze on a spot of discoloration above the door.

His hands cup her elbows and then take up rubbing warmth into her chilled arms. “Yes,” he counters, “you do. I _love_ you, that hasn’t changed just because the flag I’m flying has.”

Her eyes snap to his. “But you were _always_ flying HYDRA’s flag, weren’t you? Was there a single moment in our relationship when you weren’t?”

It seems an odd moment for it, but then it’s a rather odd smile that tips his mouth. “No, there wasn’t. But, Jemma-”

She struggles to get away, to be free of his touch and his voice and his face. His hold tightens and, when she fights too hard against that, he releases her only to press his palms to the sides of her head and hold her for a kiss. Her fingers curl impotently at her sides, tears burn in her eyes and at the back of her throat. When it ends, with a disgusting _smack_ that sickens her as much as the kiss itself, she slaps him.

It hurts. The flat of her hand stings terribly from it and she can hear her mother’s chiding voice in her ear telling her a punch is more effective. But she finds she likes the pain, likes it in the context of Newton’s third law of thermodynamics; Grant’s feeling the same agony she is, spread across his cheek. It’s only fair.

Slowly his head turns back to face her, some absurd mix of hurt and surprise wrinkling his features in a way she would have found adorable only last week. She lifts her other hand.

He’s ready this time, snatches it out of the air with a grip fit to bruise before she can make contact. “ _No_ ,” he warns evenly.

“Or what?” she asks, fighting to pull away. “Or you’ll _hurt me_?”

Her wrist slips so suddenly from his fingers that she stumbles against the window ledge. The heels of her hands scrape at the rough wood and it burns on the one that succeeded in striking him, but she clings to it. She’s not capable of doing him much damage, but she’ll inflict what she can.

Grant swallows and lets out a breath in that way she knows means he’s centering himself. His eyes drift to the airfield behind her. “We have to go.”

“If you think I’m going _anywhere_ with you-” she says, though she knows there’s nothing she can do to stop him. She doesn’t even _want_ to, not while his men are holding Fitz.

He grabs her arm, just below the elbow and pulls her along behind him, giving her no chance to argue beyond that.

“What do you think will happen?” she asks as they step into the stifling heat of the sun. “When I refuse to help Garrett with his soldiers, do you think he’ll be content with that? You know what he’s capable of, the things he did to Mike and Amador and Coulson…” She clutches at his sleeve as they near the quinjet waiting just around a bend in the dirt road. “Do you think you’ll be able to stop him doing those things to me?”

He stops so suddenly she runs into him and, with his eyes on her like that, she can’t bring herself to pull away.

“No,” he says evenly and his tone is such that she wonders if this is the most honest he’s ever been with her. “But John’s already gone back to the mainland, he’s not calling the shots here.”

That’s disappointing for a number of reasons. The entire point of this escapade was getting to Garrett, stopping him where they couldn’t stop the rest of HYDRA. That it’s all been for nothing is a terrible blow.

But worse is the fear that settles in her gut. In spite of her words to Grant, she was hopeful Garrett might be slow to harm her. She’s known him for years and though she had some worry at the start of her relationship with Grant that his SO might not approve of his dating a SciTech agent (she’s not so blind as she pretends to be to the judgment her parents face), he treats her as though he’s her slightly eccentric but no less loving uncle. Whoever this new man in charge is, he’ll have none of the fondness for her Garrett may or may not have genuinely felt.

Grant gives her a tug and she sticks close to his side. The prospect of flying in a quinjet - with its compact design and door that opens literally beneath the feet of its occupants - absolutely terrifies her, more than what might be waiting for her at the end of the journey. She feels no shame in clinging to her murdering former fiancé and it appears he has no compunctions about comforting her despite her recent struggles. He releases her arm so that he might wrap his around her shoulders, pulling her flush against him.

“You’ll be fine,” he soothes through a kiss to her temple, “we’ve done this before, right?”

Her shaky nod is given more by rote than out of true agreement and he seems to realize that; his hold on her doesn’t slacken in the slightest.

“Jemma!” Fitz calls as she boards. He sounds heartbroken, as if he’d hoped she’d escaped. Which is just absurd: she’d _never_ leave him, certainly not in HYDRA’s hands.

“I’m sorry,” Grant says softly. His forehead is resting against her hair so that when she tries to turn to face him, she can’t. But she does try and that is how her eyes land on the answer to her own unuttered question of why, of all things, he’d be sorry now.

Her mother steps out of the cockpit in her full tactical gear, smiling beatifically and holding her hands wide in anticipation of an embrace. “There you are, dove. I’ve been so worried.”

“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” Grant whispers, and then his steadying embrace gone. Only his hand is left, urging her forward into her mother’s waiting arms.

Jemma goes where she’s bidden, too shocked to do anything else.

 


End file.
